


Deserves a First Life

by elle_stone



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, MWPP Era, Summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-29
Updated: 2012-04-29
Packaged: 2017-11-04 13:27:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/394392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_stone/pseuds/elle_stone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"So Moony, tell me," Sirius says, shifting onto his side and reaching out one careless hand to trail down Remus's side.  "How has this summer been treating you?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deserves a First Life

**Author's Note:**

> Written in the summer of 2007 for prompt number 3 (Wine in the Afternoon by Franz Ferdinand) at the barefootboys community on livejournal.

i. monday

So this is summer, Remus thinks, leaning forward over the porch railing and into the first still-dusky hours of night. The air smells of cut grass and almost-rain. Sirius is leaning against the corner pillar, wine glass in his hand, eyes focused out on nothing. Stubble is shading along his cheeks and across his chin, and he has begun to grow out his hair again. His shirt is only buttoned up halfway. Remus can just barely see, through the deepening night, the skin of the top of his chest, his neck, his arms where his sleeves are pushed up, the dark glint of his eyes.

James has spent the whole day telling them of the joys of married life and a brand-new house, repeating the same tour over and over, happier than Remus has seen him in months. Lily makes faces behind his back and tells them to humor him. Sirius rests his arm almost-casual over Remus’s shoulders and gives his assurances.

Now Remus breathes deep again and closes his eyes.

This is summer, he thinks.

What an odd time. He wonders how he will manage it.

 

ii. tuesday

When the rent notices start to come in, Remus takes Sirius’s gold to the bank and exchanges it for Muggle money, brings it home and counts out the notes like his mother taught him to when he was young. Sirius sits next to him and watches, curious but unquestioning.

It is an inconvenience, but the price they pay to live as they do, away from the magical world that is slowly crumbling, at its center where no one will notice.

It was Sirius’s idea to hide in the city, yet he complains the most. Before they go to sleep, he whispers Remus evening stories of wide open countryside and wind through fur.

 

iii. wednesdsay

There is something soothing about the sound of rain hissing down on hot city summer streets. Remus sits out on the balcony, sometimes reading, sometimes just listening, straining his ears for the faraway thunder sound that echoes, sometimes, to him. The sky is a beautiful swirl of gray colors and, five floors beneath him, people walk quickly down the sidewalks, holding umbrellas over their heads.

He is only dimly aware of the sound of the door unlocking and opening, muffled curses and faraway movements.

His feet are bare, and he sticks one carefully out through the railing bars. The rain is hotter than he had imagined, yet still soothing where it hits the raised and jagged red of his newest scar.

A few minutes pass, and then Sirius is at the doorway, soaked through and dripping, staring at him. “I’m drenched,” he says.

“I see that,” Remus answers

The thunder sounds again, closer this time, and Sirius picks Remus’s book up so that his fingers slip from it, and sets it aside. He is oddly careful with it. Less so with Remus. With Remus, he is desperate with the desperation of the lonely, and this loneliness is all the worse for its familiarity. It is something Remus saw in him even when they first met—a feeling that mirrored (still does) his own.

 

iv. thursday

Remus gets up early and drinks his coffee by himself, sifting through the previous day’s Prophet. Sirius is still asleep, arm draped unceremoniously over his face. Remus leaves him a note.

Outside, it has stopped raining, but the streets are still slick with water and the sky is dark. Remus carries an umbrella, old and battered but all he has, (and he will not let Sirius replace it even though he volunteers). He opens the store, as he does every Thursday, and by lunchtime he has sold six books to four different customers, each of whom made a comment about the weather and the creeping humidity as they waited for him to count out their change.

One woman asks him if he is feeling well. “You look a little pale, dear,” she says. She is trying not to stare at his scars (he can tell).

He tells her he’s fine, just a little under the weather, and when Sirius asks him the same thing over their dinner of leftovers and cheap wine, he sighs and says, “The full moon’s next week, you know.”

 

v. friday

They spend the whole afternoon and evening in bed, for no other reason than because they can. The sheets are strewn haphazardly around them, tangled over their legs, falling over the edges of the mattress. Sirius has balanced an ash tray on a pillow between them; they watch, detached, as it fills with the wasted ends of cigarettes, as the hours slip through their fingers like the smoke they blow up to the ceiling.

“So, Moony, tell me,” Sirius says, shifting onto his side and reaching out one careless hand to trail down Remus’s side. “How has this summer been treating you?”

It’s not a question Sirius cares much about—more like something to say, an excuse to hear his own voice. Dark trails of early evening shadows are slipping down their walls.

Yet Remus considers before answering.

He thinks about the spots of ink on his fingers, the nicotine stains. The constant pull of the moon over him. The view from James’s kitchen, framed by the blue curtains Lily picked out before they were married. He thinks about the way Sirius brushes his teeth, the weary smile he always manages when he walks through the door, the indeterminate length of his hair and the bristly feel it has against Remus’s palm.

He thinks about these ordinary things, and not of the headlines slowly climbing up the columns of the Daily Prophet, the rumors that whisper among their old schoolmates, the sides that are forming in the shadow edges of his perception.

He thinks only about ordinary things and says, “I’ll remember it for the rest of my life.”

Sirius laughs and tells him he should stop being so solemn all the time. Then he stubs out the red glowing end of his cigarette and pushes away everything between them (pillows and ash try and sheets) and pulls Remus close to him again.


End file.
